Fields to lead charity as Ford role evolves

Karl Henkel / The Detroit News

Posted:
04/23/2013 12:04:45 AM MDT

Updated:
04/23/2013 11:54:14 PM MDT

Dearborn -- Mark Fields was named chairman of the Southeast Michigan United Way campaign Monday, another sign of the increasingly prominent -- and public -- role he is playing at Ford Motor Co. since being named chief operating officer in November.

While Fields is not expected to succeed CEO Alan Mulally until at least 2015, and has not officially been named his successor, Monday's announcement is another major step down that path for the 52-year-old executive.

The first step came on the first Thursday of December: Mulally sat at the head of the big table in the Thunderbird Room on the 12th floor of Ford's world headquarters and offered a brief overview of the automaker's progress, as he went through the first slides that open his weekly leadership team meetings.

Then he got to one showing the company's organizational chart. An important change -- announced the month before -- was highlighted in Ford blue.

"As you can see, Mark is now our chief operating officer," Mulally said, as he turned to Mark Fields with a grin. "That means he'll be running these meetings from now on."

With that, the 67-year-old CEO stood and gestured at his empty seat. Fields got up and slid into it as the executives applauded. Fields held up a hand to silence the clapping.

"Next slide," he said.

"Meet the new boss," laughed one of the other execs. "Same as the old boss!"

In an interview Monday at Ford headquarters, Fields, talking about his new position, said "I learn something every day. It's like Christmas: There are presents and some days there are lumps of coal, but every day you get something."

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He is now responsible for running Ford's day-to-day operations. Fields said that means getting little sleep as he stays up to run meetings in four critical, but different regions of the world.It also means new responsibilities outside the Glass House, becoming the public face for Ford at auto shows and press events around the world.

On Monday night, Fields took over leadership of the United Way from Sergio Marchionne, chairman and CEO of Chrysler Group LLC.

It is a move aimed at demonstrating Fields' commitment, not just to Ford but to the region it calls home. And Fields made it clear that the United Way will be more than just another item on his resume. He plans to involve the entire Ford executive team from the Thursday meetings in the campaign.

"I'm doing my job as the COO, but I'm also cognizant of a phrase people have used in the past: the shadow of the leader," he said.

Joined Ford in 1989

As a young man growing up in New Jersey, Fields had a fascination with cars.

When it came time to start his career after graduating from the Harvard Graduate School of Business, Fields took a trip to Dearborn.

His trip, only expected to last a couple of days, lasted a few more, not because of Ford, but because of Fields' curiosity about Metro Detroit.

"This was the late '80s, where the Japanese were going to take over the Detroit Three and we were going into a recession," Fields said. "I had a certain perception of Detroit based on what I had read and I was totally blown away. I came back and told my (now) wife, 'that's where I really want to go.' "

Ford hired Fields as a marketing analyst in 1989 and he quickly moved up.

He has led financial turnarounds for the automaker in Europe, Asia and North and South America and has established himself as a true leader, said David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research, who has known Fields for nearly two decades.

Fields has lived in Japan and in Argentina, and Florida, where his family resides. Though chided by some for previously taking weekly trips via corporate jets between Dearborn and the Sunshine State, his life outside Michigan gave Fields a bit more perspective on his second home, Detroit. And that perspective, he said, is not limited to the area's auto industry, but to the region and its residents.

"When I tell people I work in Detroit, in the past, a lot of it was 'Ugh, you work in Detroit,' " Fields said. "Today, it's 'Detroit, they're having some issues. I'm hearing some interesting things going on in Detroit; tell me about it.'

"That's one piece of evidence for me that what we're doing here in Detroit matters. ... Anything that we can do as a company and as a community to improve the image of Detroit and Southeast Michigan will pay dividends for everyone."

Peeved he was passed over

Fields became president of Ford's Americas Group in 2005, a few years before the collapse of the auto industry.

Ford then shed tens of thousands of hourly workers and closed many factories.

When Bill Ford Jr. lured then-Boeing Co. executive Alan Mulally to be Ford's CEO in 2006, many inside Ford wondered if Fields -- then considered a rather brazen executive -- would be shown the door by Ford's new leader. Fields himself was notably peeved that he was passed over for CEO.

He almost punched another executive during a board meeting, dropping a couple of expletives as he fought with then-CFO Don Leclair, according to "American Icon," a book about Ford's turnaround written by Detroit News reporter Bryce G. Hoffman.

But instead of butting heads with the new boss, Fields became the first Ford executive to embrace Mulally's color-coded weekly grading system, which helped the automaker identify and rectify its greatest deficiencies in its darkest hour. It was a symbolic gesture that other executives followed en route to the company's historic financial turnaround.

There was also the now-infamous corporate jet fiasco, in which Fields flew between Dearborn and his home in Florida, while Ford purged cash and was on the brink of bankruptcy.

But through it all, Fields remained at Ford. The U.S. auto industry recovered, and now he's the No. 2 man at a company that made $8 billion globally in 2012.

"There was a lot of speculation about whether he was capable enough for the job," Bill Ford Jr. said during a conference call in November about Fields' past. "To his credit, he stuck to it, he learned from it and he showed tremendous fortitude in grinding through an incredibly difficult process."